Triathlon - Swimming Question

My freestyle swimming is extremely weak (100 - 150 yds at best without rest) but I can have good endurance doing the breast stroke (800+ yds no problem). Should I focus my training on strengthening my freestyle and eliminate the breast stroke or strengthening my overall endurance using both strokes. My goal is to complete a sprint triathlon in mid September and a full triathlon next spring.

Doing both strokes in the pool helps to mix it up but I would concentrate on learning the freestyle.

I think you should work on the freestyle since you know the breast stroke. When doing a triathlon of any distance freestyle is the safest way to go so that you are not kicking all over the place and whacking others in the face. What do you mean by a full triathlon?

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if you are honest about sticking to the workout and paining through it, you'll amaze yourself. also, watch as many online videos as you can about tri swimming to learn better form and breathing technique.

I was in the same boat you are about 3 months ago. I couldn't swim one lap. Now, I'm swimming over a mile with no problem.

You simply have to put in the time at the pool and stick with it.

drill work is important as well. get yourself a kick board and pull bouy and do drills including no kicking (using a pull bouy), kicking only (no strokes), swimming with one arm (stroke with one arm), etc. then do a main set followed by a cool down swim. the cool down could be backstroke, breaststroke, whatever. but make the main set freestyle.

if your main set is say 1000m you don't need to do that without rest. break it down into 50's and 100's with low rest intervals - 10 seconds for 50's and 15-20 seconds for 100's. you could do say 600m of 50's and 400m of 100's. slowly reduce the 50's and add to the 100's. then you could jump up and do 1 200 and so on and so forth. eventually that could break down into ladders of say 400/300/200/100. don't worry about swimming continous. it's ok to do the sets broken as long as you keep the rest intervals low. every few weeks you can do a long swim and see how you're advancing. that's just one of many ways you could get distance in. bottom line is if you can do 800m+ in 50m-100m intervals with 10 sec rest between them you can do the whole 800 at a slightly slower pace.

and it is ok do do a stroke other than freestyle in a tri. if you need to flip over and do the back stroke or do the breaststroke, then that's what you've got to do. but freestyle is generally the best way to go. you will suck in some serious water on the breaststroke and there's a lot higher possibility of getting a foot to the face as well.

freestyle is faster SO swim freestyle
freestyle is more efficient SO swim freestyle

My freestyle swimming is extremely weak (100 - 150 yds at best without rest) but I can have good endurance doing the breast stroke (800+ yds no problem). Should I focus my training on strengthening my freestyle and eliminate the breast stroke or strengthening my overall endurance using both strokes. My goal is to complete a sprint triathlon in mid September and a full triathlon next spring.

I too say freestyle. Work on your kick & your body position. Find a masters team nearby that has coaches that focus on stroke work. Don't ditch the breastroke, use that to augment your swimming (you can't swim freestyle the whole workout!) and to take a break when you are in your race.